Hydrocarbon Sensor Request for Technologies

[Jason Cook]

The Alliance for Coastal Technologies (ACT) is accepting preliminary applications from developers and manufacturers of commercially available in situ hydrocarbon sensors who are interested in participating in independent performance testing of their technologies. ACT will review responses from interested parties and invite those with technologies that meet established criteria to submit a full proposal package. A full description of the Request for Technologies and Application Materials can be obtained from our website at: http://www.act-us.info/. Please note that preliminary applications are due by July 31, 2010.

This Request for Technologies (RFT) is in part a rapid response to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. ACT's technology verification will focus on instruments that provide measurements of hydrocarbons in water directly from offshore upper mixed layer, nearshore and estuarine environments impacted by the spill. The goal of the proposed work is to provide rigorous and quality assured data on the performance of sensors that could be used to detect, track, and quantify oil from the Deepwater Horizon spill, in support of rapid response and operational decisions for recovery. ACT has streamlined the standard Technology Evaluation process to provide timely information on instrument consistency, reliability and robustness. Initial field testing will be conducted during one to two month field deployments at diverse coastal settings along the Gulf coast. Also, recognizing that there is a need for systems within post-spill restoration timeframes, which would be months to years, this RFT also covers potential future field evaluations of instruments at multiple ACT Partner Institution sites in a wide range of environments in long-term moored deployments, and on mobile platforms in surface mapping and in deepwater, vertical profiling applications for submerged oil.

As with all ACT Technology Evaluations, there will be no fees required for qualifying applicants. Therefore, all technology testing activities are contingent upon available funds.

To qualify for this verification, candidate technologies must be:

* Commercially-available.
* New, near-commercial technologies that are ready for the market with available quality testing data to support performance claims.
* Designed to measure hydrocarbons in the type of field applications described above.